Deformed Neons

This is a discussion on Deformed Neons within the Characins forums, part of the Freshwater and Tropical Fish category; -->
The other day I bought 7 neon tetras from Petsmart as it's the only place in my area that'll sell 'decent' fish. When I ...

The other day I bought 7 neon tetras from Petsmart as it's the only place in my area that'll sell 'decent' fish. When I took them home I noticed three with really odd deformities. I named them accordingly (of course) I have Jaws, Trio and Patches.

Jaws is probably worse off, it looks like his little Jaw is stuck open I watch him eat, he seems to suck up the flakes with ease and has no problem swimming he's very active.

Trio is probably the strangest. I was looking at them and it looked at first like someone had been nipping its tail, which I thought odd I'd never seen any of them nip. I looked closer and saw Trio has a normal tail and then a third part of a tail growing in front of her normal tail. So a normal tail has basically two sections..Trio has three.

Patches just has huge grey patches where he seems to be missing color altogether.

They all share a 20g planted tank with my Betta that I've had for about a year. Temp. always stays around 80, pH stays around 7.0-7.3.

My question is: Do you think I should take them back? Have you guys experienced it? From my understanding if you take a fish like that back to petsmart they flush it..or in my area at least.

I would definitely return them in exchange for healthy fish. Outside the world of bettas, no one purposely buys sick/deformed/dying fish - in sure you didn't either. Unfortunately, deformities are common in overbred fish. What they do with the fish once you return them is on them, as far as I'm concerned. You don't have to return them alive if you are concerned about their methods. You can euthanize them yourself to make sure it's done in a way that you feel is okay. I would cull them though - IME deformed fish die a slow death. Some deformities are a bigger deal than others, so use common sense. If it looks like the fish is managing well, and if you don't mind having spent money on a deformed fish, then keep it. If it's struggling or looks like it's going to struggle to survive, then return them.

I will do that then. My biggest concern is when I take them back I'll only have four neons in that tank and I want their school to be decent sized but I don't want to buy three or four more from petsmart and I'm sure not going to Walmart for a fish. I've looked at buying fish online but it all seems kind of risky, I've never known anyone to get a fish shipped successfully.

It's great you want to keep them in a bigger school, but the new fish must be in good health. They should manage fine in the meantime.

I've had nothing but good experiences buying online, even when my fish were DOA (they gave me a credit when they didn't have to). A lot of people have great success buying online, and most are happy to make suggestions on where to go.